PLP Thailand

Preformed Line Products Company (PLP) designs and manufactures products and systems used in the construction and maintenance of overhead and underground networks for the energy, telecommunications, cable, and information industries worldwide. PLP is recognized as a leading design and manufacturer of line hardware fittings and accessories with special expertise in designing strings.

PLP Thailand is a wholly owned subsidiary of Preformed Line Products Co., which is headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio. Founded in 1947, PLP now has 16 manufacturing facilities in 13 different countries and more than 2,300 employees worldwide.

Growth presented challenges

PLP Thailand is a trusted name in their sector and by their customers, and this trust has translated to consistent growth in order volumes over the years.

“We have always welcomed business growth, however, the increase in demand naturally presented us with some new challenges,” said Jackaphan Trinarongsakul, assistant IT manager at PLP Thailand. “We had been relying on an outdated ERP system to handle our business processes, and we found ourselves struggling to manage production and delivery schedules to meet the needs of our customers.”

PLP realized they needed an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution that could meet current requirements, facilitate anticipated business growth, and be flexible enough to accommodate future business innovation.

“It was essential that we deployed a system that could generate and manage the information we need in order to analyze and improve production,” said Jackaphan.

“We also wanted to be able to work with third-party apps, such as IDOC,
E-Form, and EDI to enable the computer-to-computer exchange of
business documents—which would ultimately make transactions faster and more accurate.”

An industry-specific and intuitive fit

“At PLP, customer satisfaction is paramount. Our philosophy is to maintain the trust of our customers through staying competitive. That means investing in the right ERP system to ensure we continue to meet—or exceed—our customers’ expectations,” explained Jackaphan.

Epicor ERP (now known as Kinetic) delivers better visibility across the business and its accompanying processes, which enables more efficient business management and quicker decision making. It is also easy to personalize, has flexible deployment options—in the cloud or on premises—and supports multisite, multiplant, and multicompany enterprises. This was particularly important to PLP, as the company has operations in countries around the globe—including Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, and Canada—all of which use Epicor ERP.

“One of the key advantages of using Epicor ERP [Kinetic] is that the system is industry-specific and highly intuitive. This enables us to easily and effectively
customize and implement projects while simultaneously staying on track with time and budget constraints.”

Epicor ERP delivers better visibility across the business and its accompanying processes, which enables more efficient business management and quicker decision making. It is also easy to personalize, has
flexible deployment options—in the cloud or on premises—and supports multisite, multiplant, and multicompany enterprises. This was particularly important to PLP, as the company has operations in countries around the globe—including Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico and Canada—all of which use Epicor ERP.

“The ability to integrate sales management, production management, supply chain management, and financial management greatly enhances our efficiency. A well integrated system like this improves time and money management and transparency— positioning us to meet and anticipate
customer requirements today and into the future,” added Jackaphan.

Continued growth plans

Having successfully implemented Epicor ERP, PLP is already making plans to expand on the initial deployment. “Next, we will review all of our processes and assess whether we need to redevelop them,” said Jackaphan. “We
also plan to take a further step towards going paperless and adopt e-approvals.”

For the future, the company intends to standardize Epicor ERP at all their locations in Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, and Canada and set up a single regional data warehouse.

“We are confident that Epicor is the right fit to help us meet our goals for
improvement and development,” said Jackaphan. “We are excited at the prospect of partnering with Epicor to extend the ERP deployment across our network and deliver constant improvement for a better customer experience.”